I track people who are disrupting the world of mobile technology. Non-conformists, innovators and agitators are this blog's unsung heroes, from entrepreneurs to scientists, to rebellious hackers. I'm the author of "We Are Anonymous: Inside the Hacker World of LulzSec, Anonymous and the Global Cyber Insurgency", (Little Brown, 2012) which The New York Times called a "lively, startling book that reads as 'The Social Network' for group hackers." I recently relocated to Forbes' San Francisco office, and was previously Forbes' London bureau chief from 2008-12, interviewing British billionaires like Philip Green and controversial figures like Mohammed Al Fayed; I wrote last year's billionaires cover story on Russia's Yuri Milner, and have broken stories like the Facebook-Spotify partnership in 2011. Before all this I had stints at the BBC and as a radio journalist. You can watch me on 'The Daily Show' here. If you have a story idea or tip, e-mail me at polson@forbes.com or follow me on Twitter: parmy.

Hiroshi Mikitani is a force of nature in the world of online retail. The billionaire and CEO of RakutenRakuten — a company often referred to as the Amazon.com of Japan — recently took part in a $100 million funding round in the colorful, photo sharing site Pinterest, which he describes as “still in the process of defining its business model.” The billionaire is working on turning that investment into a strategic partnership, one that will see more opportunities for link marketers and sending potential shoppers to Rakuten sites. Mikitani knows he has to play this carefully. If Pinterest’s mostly-female users sense their image sharing site is being curated into a gaudy shopping arcade, they’ll switch off.

All the same, Mikitani is pushing forward with an aggressive expansion strategy. Before Pinterest, he’d made a raft of international investments: Britain’s Play.com, Brazil’s Ikeda, Germany’s Tradoria and Buy.com in the U.S., not to mention the acquisition of the e-reader Kobo. But Rakuten’s global growth strategy is not “aggressive enough,” he said in a recen interview with Forbes. “We need to expand the scope of our service.” Clearly this is a man with great ambitions. Here’s the interview in full, in which Mikitani extols his views on discovery shopping, integrating his company more deeply with Pinterest and not disturbing the customer experience:

FORBES: Tell us why you’re so enthusiastic about Pinterest.

Mikitani: We have been creating this totally different internet shopping environment compared with the other major shopping e-commerce players. What we have been doing is creating the platform to empower the shops, or merchants, to create a unique store, using a platform, and creating fans around them. Our merchants are not just the seller, they are at the same time a curator of selling a product. We let them get connected with the consumers through e-mail, sometimes throughs social media, so that was something we are so excited about – creating a more unique and personal shopping experience and re-creating the new connection of the consumer and the seller.

But you also find the graphical interface of Pinterest interesting?

Yes. Pinterest is not that popular in Japan yet, but through my network, from the early stages I knew about Pinterest. I have been following them, I use it, and started to realize this is a totally different social media. It’s difficult to generalize social media. Pinterest and FacebookFacebook are very different. Pinterest is about connecting people’s interest, from art deco to fashion. You find people with similar interests… and we’re expanding and getting connections with the people who have the same interest. Therefore all these people can become curators. Sometimes not for e-commerce but for some kind of activities, or just talking about some shared interests… That kind of discovery experience, we can extend to discovery shopping. We’re not just about the convenience, but connecting with consumers and also curating the product. So I thought there was a very strong cultural and strategic fit with Pinterest.

It seems like Facebook has struggled to add a layer of e-commerce to its site. Does Pinterest have an edge over Facebook in its ability to add an e-commerce layer?

Facebook has mass, and Pinterest in terms of scale is smaller than Facebook by definition. It’s about scale versus depth. With depth, Pinterest definitely has an advantage and vice versa. The majority of users in Pinterest are female, whereas as Facebook is cross-gender. They are totally different.

Pinterest seems like the more obvious platform on which to bring e-commerce into the social experience, though.

Facebook has potential too, and they have scale. For example, Kobo is the only partner of Facebook for social reading, and e-reading is another type of commerce. In that specific segment, Facebook is more suitable than Pinterest. It depends what kind of product or application you’re talking about.

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